Introduction
In 1933, the population of people belonging to the Jewish race stood at above nine million in Europe. Majority of this Jewish population lived in the countries that Germany deserved to occupy and or have impeccable influence during the Second World War.
The holocaust (In its strict sense, the term Holocaust implies a Jewish affair. Therefore, despite the presence of other races, the holocaust strictly targeted the Jews.) entangled “the systematic, bureaucratic, state-sponsored persecution and murder of approximately six million Jews by the Nazi regime and its collaborators” (Gilbert 1986, 13). Germans who came to power in 1933 believed in a big way on the racial superiority of the German as compared to other people coming from different races. They considered the Jews as racially inferior (this is the reason as to why the found it easy to carry out any evil activity against the Jews).
Consequently, the people had advocated for mass slaughter of Jews. In fact, the word holocaust refers to the “sacrifice by fire” in Greek. Because of the perceived beliefs of racial inferiority, the German authorities also targeted other races not related to Jews. Such groups included disabled, gypsies, Russians among others. About 200,000, gypsies, about 200,000 physically or mentally challenged patients from German race were also murdered.
Additionally, “…other groups were prosecuted on political, ideological and behavioral grounds, among them communists, socialist, Jehovah’s witness and homosexuals” (Dawidowicz 1975, 3). Many of the people belonging to holocaust target group, particularly the religious leaders and those whose behavior did not much some of the prescribed social norms principally died out of starvation, mistreatment and or neglect.
Reinhard Heydrich was one of the Germans high-ranking officials who played proactive roles in the Nazi government (This government also tortured other categories of people like the homosexuals. However, the degree of torture towards the Jews was pronounced) holocaust incident. Perhaps his inspirations for his involvements in the holocaust were long inbuilt within him right from the age of sixteen. Gilbert, reckons that “At the age of 16 Heydrich took up with the local Freikorps and became strongly influenced by the racial fanaticism of the German Volk movement and their violent anti-Semitic beliefs” (1986, 33).
After two years, he abandoned Halle in an endeavor to a career with the German navy at the capacity of signals officer. In fact by 1926, he had risen up to the “rank of second lieutenant in the Baltic Command of the German Navy (Admiralstabsleitung der Marinestation Ostsee)” (Dawidowicz 1975, 11).
It is while serving at this capacity that he made his initial encounter with “admiral Wilhelm Canaris of the German military intelligence” (Dawidowicz 1975, 11)). Although the two became influential friends they latter ended up being enormous foes. On being accused of being involved with a woman, sired a child and later refused to marry her, his dreams of becoming an admiral within the German navy hit a dead end. On dismissal, from the commission, he joined the Nazi party (this happened immediately after the first world war).
At the age of 27, in 1931 he became officially a member of SS. Gilbert reckons that “It wasn’t long before his Aryan looks and strict attention to detail caught the eye of the Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler, with whom he managed to secure an interview for the role of SD Chief” (1986, 18). Borrowing from his experience as a signals officer, he was able to pass the interview.
His tenure at the SD saw the organization grow from a small entity into a gigantic organization capable of controlling nationwide informants’ networks. As Dawidowicz notes, “He collected information and created files on Communists, Trade Unions, Social Democrats, wealthy industrialists, Jews, even Nazi party members and SA leaders” (1975, 37). With aid from Goring and Himmler, he organized for the fall of Ernst Röhm: the SA leader. During this incident, many SA leaders were murdered.
This saw the end of SA term in power. Through this incident, he gained an enormous reputation for being a merciless and efficient mass killer. Gilbert posits, “When Hitler needed a pretense to invade Poland he turned to the master of intrigue and Heydrich delivered” (1986, 19). This reputation perhaps saw him appointed as the president of Interpol in 1940. Reinhard Heydrich chaired the Wannsee conference in 1942 while still serving as the president of Interpol.
The main agenda of this conference was to come up and lay strategies for the ‘ final solution’: deportation coupled with extermination of every Jew who occupied territories that deserved to be solely occupied by Germans. This is what is termed as holocaust. This paper presents his role in the holocaust around the Wannsee conference shading light on the affects it had on the holocaust. It also unveils whether the murdering of the Jews was an incident already determined before the holding of the conference.
Reinhard Heydrich’s role in the Holocaust
Reinhard Heydrich was among the holocaust engineers. He took orders and answered to all matters involving the extermination and deportation coupled with the imprisonment of Jews (he was there to implement the plan put forth by Himmler of clearing the Jewish people from the face of Europe).
Such orders and queries emanated from his bosses Himmler and Hitler. In 1938, “During kristallnacht, he sent a telegram to various SD and Gestapo offices, helping to coordinate the program with the SS, SD, Gestapo, uniformed police (Orpo), Nazi party officials, and even the fire departments” (Dawidowicz 1975, 41). The telegram permitted the destruction, as well as acts of arson against Jewish synagogues together with their businesses.
The telegram also gave direction to remove all archives material positioned in the synagogues and community centers belonging to the Jews. According to Graber, the telegram also insisted that “as many Jews – particularly affluent Jews – are to be arrested in all districts as can be accommodated in existing detention facilities” (1980, 9). Soon after the conducting of his arrests, there was the need to contact the necessary concentration camps according to the telegram.
This endeavor aimed at ensuring the placement of all the Jews in the camps in the shortest time possible. The directions given in the telegram well indicates that he had the capacity to manipulate and control the Nazi government tools of governance (people referred him to as a genius who could successfully implement any plan given to him including orders). Any attempt by the law enforcers to concentrate all the Jews in the concentration camps consequently, arguably were conducted at his command and influence of the powers conferred to him.
Reinhard Heydrich had an impeccable ability to control the police and tools of state security. With the help of his boss: Himmler (he was appointed Himmler’s deputy in 1931), they used political forces to influence the police in an attempt to ensure the consolidation of the Nazi administration in the entire nation of Germany (This administration was entirely against the Jewish people. It could not tolerate anything that the people did, whether good of bad).
In 1934, he was chiefly responsible for running the largest political police force: Prussian Gestapo. As Ron reckons “In 1935, he described the police as “the state’s defensive force that could act against the legally identifiable enemy” with the SS as “the offensive force that could initiate the final battle against the Jews”” (1998, p.13).
The final battle was perhaps the early stages for holocaust. Even as the initial violence constructed by the Nazi regime principally to attack Jews begun in 1938, Reinhard Heydrich still headed the police force. His orders were mainly “”Whatever actions occurred should not endanger German lives or property; synagogues could be burned only if there was no danger to the surrounding buildings” (Ron 1998, 27).
On 21 September 1939, he called a conference in which he reiterated the significance of confining Jewish population in the fewest possible concentration camps (According to them, the Jews were inhuman and had not valid reason of living. Therefore, the only possible option was to exterminate them). As a prerequisite for facilitation of this call, he gives an authority for the establishment of Jewish elders’ council. This council had the chief mandate of ensuring the execution of every order given to the Jews without giving excuses. If the council failed in the realization of this noble duty, the “were to be threatened with “the severest measures” (Ron 1998, 29).
During the 12 November 1938 meeting, Reinhard Heydrich insisted that measures to ensure restriction of the “external sub humans”: There were no adequate strategies to get rid of them completely. Later in January the following year, Goring asked Reinhard Heydrich to tackle the Jewish problem through evacuation coupled with emigration strategies (this was an activity done along the lines of racism).
In June 1940, Heydrich “wrote to the Reich Foreign Secretary Joachim von Ribbentrop that emigration alone could not take care of all the Jews and that “A territorial final solution has thus become necessary” (He had identified the weaknesses of the Jews from all perspectives: morally, politically and even professionally. Therefore, according to him, these people were weak and useless. They could not bear any fruits in the European continent) ( Ron 1998, 35). Reinhard Heydrich joined the German navy when his country had just been defeated during the First World War. He thus had the opinions held by his parents of blaming the Jews for the defeat. Consequently, he could have done anything to ensure the incapacitation of the Jews who were to survive the holocaust.
Goring offered him a position to head the ‘central office for Jewish emigration’. While working in this capacity he incredibly dedicated a lot of effort to ensure coordination of differing initiatives geared towards fostering dominance of policies that favored SS, as opposed to Jews. He also credited a lot of his time to work on the initiatives that would facilitate the ‘final solution’.
Furthermore, while still serving as the head of the central office for Jewish emigration, in 1939, “Heydrich sent out a teleprinter message to the Chiefs of all Einsatzqruppen of the Security Police with a subject of “Jewish question in the occupied territory””(Dawidowicz 1975, 65). This telegram contained a detailed instruction addressing the appropriate strategies on how to round up the Jewish population for the purposes of placing them in ghettos (this was the best place where they could be tortured without affecting other people).
It also addressed and advocated for the formation of Judenrat coupled with an order to conduct an urgent census. This census aimed at unveiling the much-desired information about the actual number of Jewish population occupying the German territories. The telegram also ordered for the “Aryanization plans for Jewish owned business and farms” (Graber, 1980, 45).
There was the issuing of orders for evacuation of Jews from the Eastern provinces by Reinhard Heydrich. These were evident in the 29 December telegram sent by him in 1939. With regard to Lehrer (2000), the telegram described “various details of the “evacuation” of people by railway, and giving guidance surrounding the Dec 1939 Census which would be the basis on which those evacuations were formed” (79).
During the Prague meeting held on 10 October 1941, he was among the invited senior official of the government. In this meeting, the members present discussed the agenda for deport 50,000 Jews occupying of Moravia and Bohemia protectorate. They were to hand over the Jews to the ghettos of Riga and Minsk (While in these places, the Jews could not access food, medicine, clothes, and or any other basic requirement. Therefore, besides the physical torture, they were also tortures in terms of their rights). Additionally, the meeting tackled yet another crucial agenda. This entailed the decision to hand over about 5000 Jews Rash and Nebe.
Arguably, these two agendas were immensely consistent with the concerns of the Wannsee conference. The main idea was to get rid of the Jews immigrants who the people deemed racially insignificant as compared to the native Germans. As Lehrer (2000) comments, the conference discussed “The creation of ghettos in the Protectorate, which would eventually result to the construction of Theresienstadt, where 33,000 people would eventually die, and tens of thousands more would pass through on their way to death in the East” (76).
Amid being part and parcel of the officials dominating this meeting, later in 1941 he was appointed to take the responsibilities of implementing another essential decision that would help Germany deal with the perceived menace of the Jews presence in their territories by Himmler.
To this end, he was to facilitate the task of forcefully relocating the Jews to Lodz ghetto situated in Poland from Czechoslovakia, as well as Germany. The involvement of the Reinhard Heydrich in these meetings perhaps lays the foundation for his selection as the chair of the 1942 Wannsee conference that would result to holocaust.
During the 1942 conference, he presented to the German government officials the detailed plan that he deemed vital for dealing with the Jewish population. His plan perhaps well exemplify his reputation in possession of the capacity to conduct mass killing and ruthless interventional strategies to deal with anyone who happens to step on the spot forbidden by the Nazi government.
Jews happen to step on this spot: the German territories. Perhaps quoting from his speech, Graber posits, “Under suitable direction, the Jews should be brought to the East in the course of the Final Solution, for use as labor” (1980, 11).
As part of the final solution, mass moving of the Jews to areas that required heavy labor inputs was to follow. This happened with both sexes distantly separated. Reinhard Heydrich added that “the Jews capable of work will be transported to those areas and set to road-building, in the course of which, without doubt, a large part of them (“ein großteil”) will fall away through natural losses” (Graber 1980, 12).
Natural causes were used to avoid direct mentioning of the terms starvation combined with hard labor, which would have anyway killed the Jews rather than direct execution. The main intent here was to ensure that all the Jews died, if possible. Perhaps Reinhard Heydrich’s speech during the Wannsee conference reinforced this concern.
He argued that “The surviving remnant, surely those with the greatest powers of resistance, will be given exceptional treatment, since, if freed, they would constitute the germinal cell for the re-creation of Jewry” (Graber 1980, 12). Special treatment, or “special action” or “treated accordingly” as deployed in different connotations of varying Nazi correspondences, implies that the remnant Jews were to be killed through firing or gassing.
The SS squads had the obligation of arranging this nature of execution of which Reinhard Heydrich had full control (He had altered the duty of the police: instead of performing their noble role of maintaining law and order, they had become oppressive tools whose major duty was to kill, steal and destroy). Furthermore, considering the way Reinhard Heydrich constructed his language in an attempt to disguise the actual actions, it evident that he took critical roles in the doctoring of the strategies presented to the government officials at the conference.
One evident concern of this speech is that Reinhard Heydrich was a racial stereotype. He seems to advocate for his proposed strategy to end the races that appeared as unimportant in comparison to his German race. This way, through his contributions in Wannsee conference, he acted to propagate racial hatred, which would then result to more increased mass exportation and killing of people belonging to Jewish race.
As a way of example, in his speech regarding the issue of the special treatment, he argued that “The person of mixed blood of the second degree has a particularly distressing police and political record that shows that he feels and behaves like a Jew” (Graber 1980, 27). This perhaps portrays well and justifies his merciless treatment of Jews in the due cause of the final solution decision of the implementation process (According to him, what he did and said was right and worth implementing. In fact, there is one instance where he literary impregnated a girl and declined his marriage promise that he had made to the girl. This paved way for another style of torture to the Jewish girls: raping).
In fact, the Nazi government had a dare need to control the reproduction of Jewish people. Some of the other official present in the Wannsee conference like Dr. Stückart, the then state secretary went on to advocate for forced sterilization, as a way of ensuring that the second-degree Jews hardly reproduced.
To him this would have permanently curtailed the replication of Jewish trait in Europe. In this extent, his proposal was well consistent with the dilemma that faced the Nazi regime: dealing with the high population of the Jews occupying its protectorates, especially as the Germany contemplated on getting into the World War II. Reinhard Heydrich was principle person mandated to ensure successful implementation of the final solution.
As Kimel posits, “State Secretary Dr. Bühler stated further that the solution to the Jewish question in the General Government is the responsibility of the Chief of the Security Police and the SD (Heydrich was the organizer of this service despite his being unemployed) and that his efforts would be supported by the officials of the General Government” (2008 Para.5).
Reinhard Heydrich happened to the person holding this post. Indeed, at the end of the conference, members agreed that he had the noble responsibility to ensure a successful handling of the Jew question. They thus vowed to provide the necessary support.
Apart from his role as the holocaust mastermind, Reinhard Heydrich was the man solely charged with the implementation of the plan. Kimel posits, “The man entrusted with implementing Hitler decision to eradicate the Jewish population of Europe was Hitler’s deputy- Reinhard Heydrich” (2008 Para.1). Consequently, he was part of all phases of the final solution including his selection to chair the Wannsee conference.
A major part of the final solution entailed creation of concentration camps where the Jews would accumulate awaiting transportation to the killing centers or deportation to the areas where their death was to take place. In this extent, Reinhard Heydrich “created the master plan, organized the ghettos, trained and supervised the Einsatzgrouppen” (His pronounced wits made him stand a chance to manipulate both his boss, Himmler and Hitler. He had the ability to control them as he did to the central service system) (Kimel 2008 Para.1). In fact, he took proactive roles in the endeavors to ensure the resettling of the Jews in gas chambers.
As the chairperson of the famous Wannsee conference, he sealed the decision to solve the Jewish question. As notes, after this conference “he ordered the creation of the Ghettos in Poland, at railroad junctures to facilitate their future “resettlement”, he was in charge of rounding up and transportation of the Jews to the Death Factories” (2008 Para.5). This process required hefty mobilization of the German tools of maintenance of laws and order. Heydrich turned out as a gigantic genius at this.
His reputation as a mass killer perhaps gave him additional enthusiasm to execute his roles. His involvements in the holocaust are, additionally justifiable since “Heydrich had an incredible acute perception of the moral, human, professional and political weaknesses of others and he also had the ability to grasp a political situation in its entirety” (Kimel 2008, Para.9). Such a negative perception of the Jews values as compared to the Germans stands out based on the manner in which he classified Jews- first class and second class.
Those Jews who never had the German blood at were to face the weirdest treatment: executed immediately. He had an intense racial hatred that was essential for ruthless actions against the Jewish population (he even did these evils acts himself like raping girls). Gilbert, concurs with this argument adding that “His unusual intellect was matched by his ever-watchful instincts of a predatory animal, always alert to danger and ready to act swiftly and ruthlessly” (1986, 45).
Reinhard Heydrich was an ardent centre of evil in the Nazi administration. He changed the responsibilities of the police as dictated by the totalitarian states from tools for enhancing law and order into lethal weapons of the state. In this regard, Breitman claims that the police acted as instruments of “oppression of the citizens” (they did every sort of evil to disrupt law and order for the Jewish people who had no powers to defend themselves) (1991, 121).
He also deployed enormous steps to ensure that the police hardly acted in accordance to the interests of the state. Consequently, Reinhard Heydrich enabled the police to violate human rights (they carried out acts of terror, blocked food from reaching the starving Jews, exposed them to stern environments and duties despite their deteriorated bodies). In fact, he provided an absolute assurance that they would not convict for their acts. The decision to murder Jews was a state engineered policy and hence police had to enforce it.
Reinhard Heydrich had proved in other instances as a merciless cold killer. According him the responsibility for implementation of the concerns of the final solution, guaranteed both his senior Himmler and Hitler incredible success of the decision to mass eliminate the Jewish population amounting to about eleven million. He was thus the disguised pivot upon which the Nazi regime oscillated. As Kimel (2008) notes, “The development of a whole nation was guided indirectly by this forceful character” (Para.7).
By noting that he had an immense power to manipulate all political centers of Nazi regime administration, his contribution to doctoring and subsequent implementation of Hitler decision was conspicuous. Fleming reckons, “He was far superior to all his political colleagues and controlled them as he controlled the vast intelligence machine of the SD” (in fact, he could even use the Jews to harm themselves unknowingly through the unhealthy foods he ordered to be given to them)(1984, 56). The circumstances giving rise to the holocaust are arguably chiefly attributable to his position and perceived capabilities by his superiors particularly Hitler.
Opposed to somewhat many anticipation that the final decision: being one of the critical decisions made by Nazi government, to have more of the most senior administrator’s follow up, Reinhard Heydrich was responsible for the follow up of its proceeds. This was perhaps because he was an impeccable manipulator.
He even manipulated Hitler leave alone Himmler. Additionally, he employed “his extensive knowledge of the weaknesses and ambitions of others to render them dependent on himself” (Fleming 1984, 57). An introspection of his earlier life perhaps exemplifies his magnitude of atrocity against the Jews.
When he served in the army majority of his comrades initially thought that he was a Jew. He disputed immensely these allegations. As Graber reckons, “When Heydrich was a child in Halle, neighborhood children made fun of him, calling him “Isi” (Izzy), short for Isidor, a name with a Jewish connotation” (1980, 81). Such allegations made him incredibly angry especially when he served in the navy (In fact, many people attribute his ruthless actions against the Jews to this name. He did not like it and consequently the Jews. The name significantly influenced his character.).
He, in fact, challenged everybody who made such allegations for tarnishing his personality. His hatred for Jews was thus a long-term concern. Now that he had the opportunity to wipe out this long hated race, people expected the holocaust perhaps to be even worse than it was.
The responsibility of the implementation of the final solution was not by coincidence that it landed to the hand of Heydrich. He was brilliant in giving witty ideas during the meetings between Hitler and Himmler. He, in fact, outshined Himmler in terms of ideas. As Fleming (1984) reckons, “He made Hitler dependent on him by fulfilling al his most insane schemes, thus making himself indispensable.
He supplied Himmler with brilliant ideas so that he could shine in conferences with Hitler, and would do it so tactfully that Himmler never suspected that these ideas were not his own” (57). Holocaust was evidently on Hitler’s insane scheme whose implementation was squarely dependent Reinhard Heydrich for its successful implementation.
Reinhard Heydrich made proactive steps towards solving the nightmare problem of Jewish population destruction. He initiated the steps to ensure that the fabric bonding the Jewish community was substantially torn. To do this, he adopted the strategies of starving, brutally mistreating the Jews, and making use of his foes (Jews) to initiate their process of self-extinction.
As Kimel notes, he “camouflaged the gas chambers as showers for disinfection, incited starved people to volunteer to “resettlement” by offering them bread and sugar and brought Jews from the west in first class railroad cars with dining cars to Auschwitz” (2008, Para.9). A vast myriad of dirty tricks against the helpless Jews had Reinhard Heydrich name conspicuously written behind them.
Reinhard Heydrich had the ability to covert masses of people other than police into murderers. As Kimel notes, “he personally selected the Einsatzgrouppen from ordinary people, not psychopaths; they were bankers, policemen, clerks and even one pastor” (2008, Para.11).
He perhaps managed to accomplish this through the aggravation of racial discrimination amongst the native German population. In this context, Jews stood out as lesser human beings who only served to deprive the native population off their rights. Killing them on a mass scale was then not a significant issue.
Reinhard Heydrich constituted one of the gifted Germans who would pursue whatever responsibilities accorded to them to completion. He would do anything to ensure the realization of his desires. During the holocaust, his desires changed from the roles that he had assumed in overthrowing the previous regime, to extermination and extinction of Jewish population. In fact, he was the most lethal person in Germany.
In Germany, it was almost impossible to gain power without using some black mail. Even though, Reinhard Heydrich had the immense ambition of becoming Reichsminister Minister and if possible the next top most leader of Germany he was not of much threat as compared to, Himmler before the eyes of the Hitler. The most positive way of dealing with Himmler was to subdivide his responsibilities. Implementation of the final solution happened to be one of the responsibilities deemed suitable for multiplication.
Without the contribution of Reinhard Heydrich in the implementation coupled with evaluation of the final solution, mass killing of Jews was not possible. As Kimel notes, “Heydrich was nominated by Hitler as the Protector of Czechoslovakia, and in this post he performed a remarkably admirable job (The admirable job in question included the organization of the arrest of massive number of people including the Catholic political aspirants. In fact, they say that the available accommodation space in the jail was inadequate following the massive arrests); Heydrich introduced a series of liberalizing moves, decreased the level terror, increased the food rations” (2008, Para.9).
Czechoslovakia government ordered the killing of Reinhard Heydrich. This order excelled. What followed was his assassination in 1942. Upon his death, the implementation of the final solution was now to go to Himmler. As MacDonald notes, the “…cunning, bluffing and superior intelligence of Heydrich was gone” (1989, 12).
Consequently, amid brutal approach in the implementation of the final solution by Himmler ended up not being such a success as compared to Heydrich’s case. Consequently, some Jews survived in Hungary, Bulgaria and France. In October 1944, Himmler suspended the killing of Jews because of “disregarding Hitler’s orders and overruling the objection of the head of Gestapo, Miller” (MacDonald 1989, 15).
Evidently, it stands out safe perhaps to make an assumption that if Reinhard Heydrich was alive, hardly could have any Jew have remained. The manner in which the killings ended additionally justify that Reinhard Heydrich was the main architect and implementer of the final solution. His death resulted to non-completion of the aim of the final solution. Only around six million Jews died out of the targeted eleven million.
Decision to murder Jews
Right even before the holding of the conference to seek the final solution, in January 1942, the Nazi government had a clear intent to conduct mass killing of the European Jews. As Fleming (1984) notes, “The decision itself, to exterminate the Jews, was presumably taken before the conference was held.
People had approximated the number of Jews murdered before the Wannsee Conference took place to be 1 million” (1). The meeting, additionally, lasted for only ninety minutes. With the immense factors worth considering when making a decision, it was impossible arriving at ways of handling the possible threats posed by the Jewish people to Germany and the European territories it controlled within this short time span.
From the situation that was on goings in Poland and other territories in the Soviet Union, the conference hardly discussed or came up with new strategies of handling the Jewish question.
In fact, new extermination camps were in place at the time of holding the conference. As Cesarani reckons, “Fundamental decisions about the extermination of the Jews, as everybody at the meeting understood, were made by Hitler, in consultation, if he chose, with senior colleagues such as Himmler and Göring, and not by officials” (1999, 181).
Consequently, it must have been evident to the majority of the participants that the decision on the Jewish question had already been made. Reinhard Heydrich was thus acting within his capacity to brief the conference attendants on some policy under implementation.
Perhaps Reinhard Heydrich main purpose of convening the conference was mainly to make sure that conflicts such the ones experienced upon mass killing of Germans with Jewish blood was conducted in Riga. As Cesarani observes, “The simplest and the most decisive way that Heydrich could ensure the smooth flow of deportations was by asserting his total control over the fate of the Jews in the Reich and the east, and [by] cow[ing] other interested parties into toeing the line of the RSHA” (1999, 187).
Majority of content of the speech delivered by him happened to be news for the better part of the attendants. Again, they took remarkably little time to answer technical question regarding the strategies for solving the Jewish question. This perhaps well indicates that such decisions must have come from a non-disputed authority. This authority happened to be Hitler.
The decision to murder Jews was not arrived upon convening of the Wannsee conference. The chief purpose of holding the conference was perhaps to seek legitimatization of the mass killings of the vast Jewish people in Germany, as well as its territories.
On the closure of the meeting, he appeared to have managed to convince the participants on his strategies of dealing with the Jewish question. Many of them not only admitted having thought the plans as effective, but also promised to offer assistance that was within their capacity. The conference was thus a final step toward advocating for ruthless actions against the Jews. The aftermaths of the conference gave rise to an immense catastrophe on the Jews.
As Fleming notes, “They deported them in considerable numbers to the ghettos in the east and murdered them after the conference” (1984, 5). For the case of German Jews, this was a new thing, only that the magnitude of the exercise of this exercise was aggravated upon the convening the Wannsee conference.
Right from 1941, Reinhard Heydrich has sort for authenticity of plans to exterminate and murder Jews. Goring had as a repercussion accorded this authority European Jews deportation having yielded success. His main intention to call the conference was no predominantly depended on the need to come up with a plan mad by the top official, of the government.
This also appears as the thought of Cesarani who laments, “the main purposes of the conference were to establish the overall control of the deportation program by the RSHA over a number of significant Reich authorities, and to make the top representatives of the ministerial bureaucracy into accomplices and accessories to, and co-responsible for, the plan he was pursuing” (9).
In fact, special approval by the transportation minister was vital since the process of deportation entangled hefty logistical needs. With the existing economical difficulties, this was necessary since the appointment of the rail transport was essentially for this purpose.
Ron Rosenbaum, a journalist author, reveals that the term final solution had been used much earlier in the Nazi party documents even before the Wannsee was held. As at 1931, the Nazi party documents incorporated the terms to refer to putting the Jews forced labor entangling cultivation of swamps, which were predominantly administrated by the SS division (Ron 1998, 23).
This is perhaps giving rise to the Nuremberg laws. The proposition of the final decision was thus arguably implementation of Nuremberg laws in the extreme manner.
Hitler, on the other hand, on 16th of December 1941 in a meeting with the top government officials, had given hints on the decision to murder Jews well in reasonable time before the day of the conference. He had priory called for incorporation of plans to handle the Jews mercilessly. In this regard, he argued that the Germans had no need to spare the Jews or even any other person in the world, apart from their fellow Germans in one of meetings with his senior official in the Nazi government.
Ron expounds on this and records Hitler to have having commented that “if the combined forces of Judaism should again succeed in unleashing a world war that would mean the end of the Jews in Europe…I urge you: Stand together with me…on this idea at least: Save your sympathy for the German people alone” (1998, 67).
This call aimed at drawing the support for the mass killing of the Jews-holocaust. Additionally, Hitler noted that he was involved in a discussion that would finally see the Jews relocated to the east. Although, not all the 3.5 million of people were possible to shoot, according to Hitler, they had to do something about them (Arguably, this indicates the possibilities of inculcating some strategies of execution of some Jews). Additionally, he commented, “…is scheduled to take place in the offices of the RSHA in the presence of Oberqruppenfuhrer Heydrich.
Whatever its outcome, a prominent Jewish emigration will commence” (Ron 1998, 69). Hitler’s comments about the strategies of copping with the Jews menace perhaps gave the take and the decision to murder Jews well before the time of Wannsee conference. The argument here is that, Reinhard Heydrich was only reading the harsh decisions against the racially considered outfit group of people: Jews, during the Wannsee conference.
Conclusion
Upon losing in the first war, Germans associated the loss to the people who Heydrich termed as inferior subhuman: Jews. In 1933, the popu lation of this inferior race, stood at around even million. These Jews occupied the area that Germany thought it was its right to occupy and or influence.
Consequently, Goring directed Heydrich to solve the Jewish question through evacuation and emigration. On evacuation and emigration of around 200,000 Jews, Heydrich thought that evacuation and emigration was not adequate strategy for ensuring that the Jews entirely got out of the German colonies.
Consequently, he brought up the idea of the final solution. In the paper, it has been argued that Heydrich was much close to Hitler than Hitler was to Himmler: the boss to Heydrich. The paper continued to argue that Heydrich was part of the initial planning of the final solution decision, which translated to holocaust.
This line of argument is largely justifiable since as the paper has noted, Heydrich was an impeccable brilliant influencer, who influenced even Hitler. Whenever any plan to execute dirty deals, including the blackmails that saw Hitler come to power, Heydrich was there for Hitler to ensure successful implementation of the plan.
His roles in the holocaust were particularly significant. Right from the preliminary arrangements that saw mass killing of Jews emerge even before the convention of the Wannsee conference, Heydrich was largely involved with them. It is also apparent that the Wannsee conference aimed at briefing the senior members of the Nazi regime administration on the strategies worth taking to solve the Jews question for the last time.
The implementation process of the final solution solely fell in the hand of Heydrich. As the paper argues, the implementation process would not have been as successful as it would have been if pioneered by his boss Himmler. Perhaps this is incredibly justifiable by the manner in which the implementation process came to a dead end upon the assassination of Heydrich in 1942.
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